Buhari’s handshake and handcuff (2)

In the concluding part of his piece EBELE CHUKWU draws from the effectiveness of PTF intervention in Nigeria’s economy. Under Muhammadu Buhari’s watch PTF created scores of thousands of jobs by encouraging competition in the building and pharmaceutical sectors, etc. Nigeria, in that time, for once ditched an otherwise notoriously irredeemable phobia for local products. Drugs for our hospitals and building materials (like paints) were locally produced with proven ease and quality. Our ‘business as usual culture’ hastily took flight as PTF staff and contractors exuded the level of competence seen only in societies devoid of the sort of chaos and corruption that typify ours. But a presidential fiat, argues Chukwu, collapsed all this in one day. Enjoy reading:

To be paid for a completed contract, all the contractor needed was to present a certificate of completion issued by the ubiquitous consultants engaged by the PTF and his cheque would be prepared. And with a proper letter of introduction, a contractor could send a third party to pick his cheque across a counter in the Finance Department without any ceremony. Picking a cheque then was just like walking into a bank to withdraw cash across the counter. As staff of Set and Sell Communications Ltd and later Media Trust Ltd, I personally picked several cheques on behalf of these firms. The challenge the PTF finance department faced then was getting contractors to pick their cheques which would pile up for months as many never knew it was so simple.
Under its drug revolving scheme, PTF set up offices in hospitals across the country and supplied them with drugs. The financial consultants employed by PTF ensured that receipts from the sales of the drugs were used to replenish the stocks in an unending cycle that banished out-of-stock anthem the Nigerian public were forced to listen to before then. And it was not easy to divert PTF drugs to the parallel market. The smallest tablet supplied had PTF logo engraved on it. Somebody attempted diverting the drugs and was caught. Buhari ensured the culprit went to jail. After that, nobody heard of diversions again.
The strategy of the PTF in procuring drugs is worth reviewing. Over 60% of the drugs supplied to the PTF were locally produced. In fact, the PTF only imported drugs that could not be produced by the local pharmaceutical firms. The pressure on the existing pharmaceutical companies was so much that almost all these firms had to increase their capacity by expanding and employing more hands. Neimeth Pharmaceuticals, Emzor Pharmaceuticals, among others, can be contacted to verify this. This policy was deliberate to create more jobs.
This column is not enough to put in a proper perspective the job Buhari undertook and did while in PTF but it suffices through this glimpse to understand the mindset and the strategy of this maelstrom which the ruling elite hate for his forthrightness – a quality in short supply in governance today.
Before the coming of PTF, General Ibrahim Babangida had introduced the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) which he had claimed had no alternative. The revered economist, Professor Sam Aluko, had also reminded him that economics was a science of alternatives; that even death had an alternative which was life and that SAP was a kiss of death. IBB was to acknowledge the failure of SAP when out of frustration around 1991, he exclaimed that “the Nigerian economy had defied all known economic theories and was surprised that the economy had not collapsed”.
The economy did not collapse. The PTF intervention ensured it did not. This was the lesson OBJ failed to grasp when he dissolved the Fund with executive fiat in 1999. As at 1997, funds available to the PTF was about N115 billion and Nigerians could point at projects the fund was expended on. A decade after PTF, the governments from OBJ’s to date had spent much more than that in the power sector alone and have not been able to generate even a megawatt more of electricity.
Managing public funds is serious business. Buhari was fond of telling contractors on visit to sites: “If you perform well, you get a handshake. If you perform badly, you get a handcuff”. This is the mantra we need at this historical juncture. The man that incarnates this mantra out of the available presidential candidates is Buhari.
There is also a lesson to be learnt from the day Buhari left PTF. Obasanjo, on assumption of office, announced the setting up of the interim management committee led by Mallam Haroun Adamu to wind down PTF. The following day, Buhari addressed a press conference and invited the new management to immediately take over. He told Nigerians that everything the new management needed were in the records to which they would have unhindered access. He bid his staff farewell, descended the stairs, literally jumped into his four wheel drive that took him home to Daura. He never stepped into that premises again to this day. And he never fled the country to escape the EFCC.
The likes of Obasanjo should go back to the military academy to understand “The Art of War” before going on another offensive.

Chukwu wrote from Eziora, Ozubulu ([email protected], 08186482246)